


Coalesce

by mrs_leary (julie)



Category: Merlin (TV) RPF
Genre: Far from home, Friends to Lovers, Los Angeles, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:53:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23957215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julie/pseuds/mrs_leary
Summary: Colin runs into Eoin while they’re both working in LA, and they start meeting up for a drink semi-regularly. They are comfortable together, and Colin is more interested in their differences than unsettled by them. In fact, maybe there are ways of being that he could learn from Eoin, if Eoin doesn’t mind him hanging around…
Relationships: Eoin Macken/Colin Morgan
Comments: 13
Kudos: 11
Collections: Merlin RPF Prompts & Fests





	Coalesce

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aeris444](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aeris444/gifts).



> **Warnings:** Set in early 2020, with mention of The Virus. 
> 
> **Notes:** Written in response to a prompt from **aeris444** in the **Merlin RPF Promptacular Fest 2020**. ♥ 
> 
> **Disclaimer:** This flight of fancy has nothing at all to do with the actual Colin Morgan or Eoin Macken. The story is purely imaginary, and is not intended to cause offence.

# Coalesce 

♦

He was a bit too earnest for Los Angeles, maybe that was the problem. He was definitely a bit too introverted. Colin surveyed the huge room full of partygoers, everyone dressed and finessed despite it being mid-afternoon, all big bright smiles and constant chatter. The wait-staff, perhaps wannabe cast or creatives themselves, glided their way through with trays of drinks and tiny nibbles of food. Colin was too casually dressed, too unfinished, too shabby at small-talk. He couldn’t even see the director he was about to work with, nor the producer they were supposed to be schmoozing – though there was a horrible chance that Colin wouldn’t recognise the latter, at least, no doubt all gussied up and out of her usual context. 

Colin gulped down the last of his beer, and quickly swapped the empty glass for a full one as a tray floated by, borne by a particularly beautiful young woman. She discreetly winked at him as she passed by, which cheered him – and then when Colin looked up again he saw someone he knew, which had his heart bursting with joy and relief. 

“Eoin!” Colin greeted the man as he approached. “I didn’t know you were in LA.”

“Likewise! It’s good to see you again. It’s been…” Eoin made a show of trying to reckon the days, weeks, months and then giving up when the maths defeated him. “Far too long a while.”

Colin was grinning like a mad thing, he was sure. Just the sound of Eoin’s Dublin brogue and the friendly warmth in his gaze had something inside Colin relaxing, something that he hadn’t even known was all knotted up. “You’re working?” Colin asked.

“Hoping to be,” Eoin responded with a nod. “We’re in pre-prod limbo at the moment, just waiting for things to come together.”

“Same. My director’s here somewhere, or should be – and we’re meant to be sweet-talking another potential producer…” Colin shrugged helplessly. 

Eoin’s head dropped a little, and a corner of his mouth kicked up in a suggestive smile. “You can be sweet-talking me while you’re waiting…”

Colin felt that if he grinned any wider he’d be in danger of turning inside out. “A rehearsal, like?”

“An audition,” Eoin countered, with his gaze turning hot.

Colin was just about to query what role he’d be auditioning for, when they were each reclaimed by work demands. He was surprised to find how deep a wrench it was to let Eoin go, and he fancied that Eoin might feel the same. 

“Text me!” called Eoin as he was dragged away. “We’ll go for a drink.”

“I will!” Colin called back. And he lifted his hand in a fare-thee-well just before they lost sight of each other in the crowd.

♦

The first time they met for a drink, it lasted rather less than an hour, and was interrupted and eventually terminated by phone calls about work projects, texts between Eoin and Tom, and various other distractions. Neither of them had their head in the right space – but that was OK. They were both working actors, and they knew that the friendship forged long ago remained real. Parting with no hard feelings, they agreed to try again a week later.

♦

The second time they met for a drink, Eoin and Colin were both far more focussed on the matter at hand. They talked from mid-afternoon into the early evening, and still they weren’t done yet. They had decided on a bar near Colin’s hotel, so once the sun began setting and Colin started feeling the cold, he suggested they go back to his hotel room to collect an extra layer to wear.

“Sure,” Eoin agreed, “and then maybe you wanna grab something to eat?”

“Sure,” Colin responded, and they shared an easy smile. 

They paid their tab, and then set off down the street together, walking shoulder to shoulder. Colin shoved his hands into his jeans pockets for warmth, while Eoin strode along beside him with his easy limber gait. “Oh, all that chatter and I forgot to ask,” Eoin said, breaking a comfortable silence. 

“What’s that?” Colin prompted.

“Did your sweet-talking work on the producer?” 

Colin laughed. “That’s still a ‘maybe’, apparently.”

“Aw, man…” Eoin sympathised. “How’s anyone gonna resist _your_ sweet-talking, that’s what I want to know.”

“Yeah, right!” Colin bubbled over with laughter again. Had Eoin always had this effect on him? Colin couldn’t really remember, but it was certainly the case that day – and also on the day of the party. “You helped, you know,” Colin told him now. 

“Did I?”

“Yeah, I… I dunno. You distracted me, I guess. I forgot to be nervous.” 

“Colin Morgan with all his charm and no nerves – that sounds pretty unbeatable to me!”

“Hope so.” They walked along, with Eoin instinctively following Colin’s lead as they turned down one street and then up another. 

“Who could refuse you anything?” Eoin muttered, almost as if to himself, and Colin just grinned in response. 

Colin’s hotel room was on a high enough floor that he had a half-decent view across urban Los Angeles, with a huge sky, and the flat horizon of the ocean to be glimpsed through the haze – the latter more a matter of faith, perhaps, than reality. But Eoin didn’t even glance at any of that. He was too busy looking around the room. “Oh, this is _vintage_ Morgan,” Eoin murmured. After a moment he chuckled, and looked at Colin as if wondering how his remark had been received. 

Colin himself was looking around with fresh eyes at the notepads and pencils, the books and magazines with both text and artwork – most of them lying open to particular pages – the script marked up with scribbles and highlights and post-it flags, and then a small pile of more scripts waiting to be read. There was hardly a flat surface that wasn’t covered. 

“Researching your role?” Eoin prompted.

Colin shrugged helplessly. “Yes.” 

“Brilliant!” Eoin hooted a laugh. “You come to mine next time, and I’ll show you how I’ve been preparing.” 

“Deal,” Colin agreed with a grin.

♦

The third time they met for a drink, they didn’t bother going out; Colin had been invited to Eoin’s apartment. He hadn’t been there before, so he was curious. 

In fact, he reflected, he hadn’t been in many private homes at all in Los Angeles, and he was always interested to see how other people lived. It could be the little things that grounded a performance in the fictional reality. The first time he’d been cast in a show set in America, he’d had to relearn the lifelong instinct to turn on a light by flipping the switch down rather than up. A tiny detail, but having a character fumble with a light switch every time he entered a room in his own house would be ridiculous.

Eoin’s apartment was charming in a ramshackle kind of way. It was a subdivided part – “A quarter, more or less,” Eoin said – of a house that hadn’t seen better days for some decades. The garden was an overgrown jungle, but rather than darkening the windows this gave the filtered sunlight a cool green tone, and added a feeling of privacy rare for LA. Eoin’s possessions were arranged even more casually than the man himself, and it was fairly clear that an armchair and sofa had only recently been cleared of all but cushions. Colin felt immediately at home. 

“This is nice,” he offered. 

“Good, yeah,” Eoin said. “I like it. I’m comfy here, you know?” 

Colin nodded. “I can see why.”

“You want a beer?” Eoin asked, already halfway through a further doorway. 

“Yeah, thanks.”

Eoin paused to glance back. “It was a rhetorical question,” he said with a glint of laughter in his eyes. “Come and see the rest of the place. Do the tour.”

So they went from room to room, each with a bottle of beer in his hand, and Colin tried to get his head around the layout. It felt completely random, but he supposed it had been a creative response to the needs of the subdivision. At least he could place the bathroom now in relation to the living room, and that was probably the only crucial thing. 

Soon enough they were settled. Eoin took the sofa, so Colin took the armchair. Not that he wanted to keep his distance, but they were arranged at a ninety-degree angle, and that made it more comfortable to talk. 

They exchanged a quick succession of busy nothings, before Colin prompted, “You were going to show me your research. Or – you said ‘preparation’.”

Eoin laughed, and gestured expansively across the whole room. “It wasn’t obvious as soon as you walked in?”

Colin obliged by looking around at the random clutter, but it could have been anything or nothing, and Eoin hadn’t talked in any detail about the project or his role in it. “I’m stumped,” said Colin. 

And Eoin reached off to one side for a hat – a battered old Stetson with a motley collection of feathers stuck in its band which also bore a turquoise-and-silver medallion. He put it on, adjusted it – and then looked at Colin with an expression transformed into… someone else. 

“Brilliant!” murmured Colin.

An inclination of his head in thanks, that wasn’t at all like the ways in which Eoin moved, and then Eoin took off the hat and was himself again. “You like it, then?”

“Absolutely.”

A wry huff of humour before Eoin said, “It’s hard _not_ to be ruggedly handsome in a hat like that.”

“You’d find that hard anyway, wouldn’t you?” Colin retorted. 

It was only meant to be banter, but Eoin considered him with a sharp narrow gaze for a moment, before taking a deep drink of beer and then sliding down lower to sit on the sofa with his head resting against the back of it. “I’ve been thinking a lot about _Merlin_ lately,” Eoin announced.

Colin just nodded, neither encouraging nor discouraging. This was inevitable, after all.

Eoin rocked his head towards Colin to say, “I know you’re not keen on reminiscing.”

“Oh, I just –” Colin searched for the right words. “It’s not like I have bad memories or anything.”

“I know. I’m glad.”

“It’s just that I like being in the present, yeah? And looking to the future.” He sighed. “Letting the past be – Yeah, just letting it be.”

“Perfectly reasonable,” Eoin said. “But it was such a happy team, right? Like the best kind of family. And since this #MeToo thing exploded – and about time, too –”

“Amen.”

“Ah-bloody-men!” Eoin echoed with an ironic laugh. “I’ve been thinking about all the different productions I’ve been a part of, and how even if there’s nothing really dire going on, there’s usually at least one jerk who… gets people’s hackles rising. And then other people, even if they’re not the jerk’s targets, have to tread carefully, feel wary… Not that treading carefully is a bad thing in itself, but d’you know what I mean? Maybe the _Merlin_ team was so happy because there wasn’t even a whiff of anyone like that around, and we could all just… relax. We could be ourselves, because everyone felt safe.”

Colin considered this for long moments, thinking of _Merlin_ and of other productions, of the things he’d heard and the few horrible things he knew. “I think maybe you’re right,” he offered. _Merlin_ felt like an innocent long-forgotten Golden Age, in some ways. It had begun twelve years before… which felt like a lifetime ago… or maybe just yesterday. 

“It was safe,” Eoin pensively continued after a while. “Which meant I could flirt.” 

The serious moment broke when Colin guffawed. “You flirted with _everyone_.” 

“And no one took me seriously, that’s my point.” 

“Didn’t they?” Colin asked with a light display of sympathy.

Eoin was looking elsewhere, so Colin could barely see even a quarter-profile. Eventually he admitted, “There was someone that I wished would. Take me seriously, I mean.”

“Mmm…?” Colin prompted. Surely the obvious choice was Tom, though Eoin might be embarrassed by that, now that Tom was married and firmly settled with Laura and the kids. Colin mused some more. Maybe Katie…?

“Someone that _everyone_ wanted.”

Bradley, then…?

“You,” said Eoin, turning back towards him. “I wished _you_ would –”

Colin was beyond surprised and all the way to flabbergasted. He let out a nervous laugh and mumbled, “What? No…”

Pain cracked across Eoin’s face. “You could have had anyone.”

“I hardly think so!” Colin protested rather more forcefully. “Anyway, what’s that got to do with anything?”

Eoin looked confused. Pained and confused. 

Colin felt relentless. “You’re not gonna try telling me that I’d never have chosen you.”

“Aren’t I?” Eoin said faintly. “Wouldn’t you – I mean, would you?” He let out a groan. “God, I need another beer.” And he got up and escaped into the kitchen. 

After a few long moments, Colin figured Eoin wasn’t coming back. He wondered if he himself was supposed to make a tactful exit now so that later on they could pretend this never happened. “Bugger that,” Colin muttered under his breath. Meeting up with Eoin again had… energised him. There was no way he was gonna miss out on seeing where this led.

Colin walked steadily through to the kitchen, making sure his footsteps could be heard, so that he wouldn’t startle Eoin. He found the man standing there leaning back against the cabinets with his arms firm across his torso, and a cold beer in his hand held pressed against his forehead. “All right?” Colin asked, pausing a pace or two into the room.

Eoin let out a gusty sigh. “Just making an eejit of myself.”

“You’re not.” He took another step or two closer. “This your first time with a guy?”

“No,” Eoin replied with another groan, rolling the cold beer bottle back and forth on his forehead. Then after a moment he lifted his head and looked at Colin. “What? You’re saying ‘this is’? Not ‘would it be’?”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Colin confirmed. He didn’t hesitate now, but took those final steps to stand in front of his friend, a mere breath away. 

Eoin kept his head back. “It’s not your first time?” 

“With a guy? No.”

A nod as if this confirmed something Eoin had suspected. Then Eoin reached back to place the beer on the counter, all the while holding Colin’s gaze. “Well, then.”

Colin smiled, and lifted his hands to cup that handsome face, and leant in to kiss the man. Within moments the kiss transformed from tentative to enthusiastic to passionate, and when Colin finally lifted his head again he was breathless with anticipation. “Wanna make out on the sofa?” he asked. “Or take me to your bed?”

“Oh, bed, definitely,” Eoin said, his dark eyes alight with need and his chest lifting with each breath. “Let’s not waste any more time.” 

Eoin waited a moment until Colin nodded, and they both pushed away from the kitchen cabinets, Eoin taking Colin’s hand in his and leading him to the bedroom. They didn’t waste any time at all, but fell across the bed together, grasping at and grappling with each other, resuming the kiss with thrice the passion, hands busy with firm holds and then fumbling searches. 

They ended up with a hand thrust down in each other’s undone jeans and their other arm tight around the other’s waist – and kissing, kissing, always kissing. Their rhythm was a mess, but a frantic mess – and perhaps Eoin had been as needy as Colin, for moments later they were both coming, both making a glorious noise about it, and it was all the most utterly divine shambles… 

For long lovely moments they stayed just where they were, holding each other, pressed hard together, heads tucked in close on each other’s shoulder. But they parted, as they must, slowly falling back, unsticking, gently letting go of softened cocks, and sharing one last kind kiss and then a sweet quirk of the lips. 

“Oh, man…” Eoin murmured at last as they lay there watching each other and getting their breath back. Colin huffed a laugh, unable to quit smiling. Eoin rolled back to reach for a bottle of water from the bedside table, and they each refreshed themselves with a couple of mouthfuls. 

Something like normality eventually returned. “Here, come on,” said Eoin, sitting up. Colin pushed himself up onto his elbows, feeling reluctant but assuming Eoin meant to get out of the bed now. Well, it was his bed, so he was entitled to call the shots. 

But apparently Eoin just wanted to get naked – belatedly, perhaps, but Colin didn’t have a problem with it. Eoin was already bare-chested, which confused Colin – how had he discarded his t-shirt when they’d basically been mouth-to-mouth ever since their first kiss in the kitchen? Well, who cared for the details… They both stripped off their remaining clothes, and then met again skin-to-skin in the middle of the bed, and relaxed into a snugly mutual hold. 

“All right?” Eoin quietly asked.

Colin was drifting on a river of contentment. “Yeah,” he murmured. “All right.” 

“Yeah,” Eoin agreed. And he pressed a kiss to Colin’s temple, and they drifted away together. 

♦

Relaxed. That’s how he felt with Eoin: safe and relaxed. Colin could just be himself. Even the basic things were just so easy – like, he never had to tone down his accent or repeat everything he said in ‘English’ English. And he could rely on Eoin just being himself, too, and whether they agreed or differed it was always perfectly fine. They worked it out.

Vitally, Eoin never got in the way of Colin’s reading and research. And while Eoin was obviously far better than Colin at just kicking back and doing nothing, it was also obvious that Eoin’s creative energy was a constant in his life, whether it was lying fallow or bubbling over. 

“We should make a short,” Eoin announced out of the blue one day. They were both comfortably sprawled on the sofa, overlapping limbs, while Colin read and Eoin pondered. “While we’re waiting on these projects to get underway,” Eoin continued. “Let’s not waste time. We could write it and film it – or just come up with a scenario and wing it from there. What d’you think…?”

Colin had closed his book, marking his place with a finger, and now he tilted his head in a quibble. “Maybe.” He never signed up for anything until he could see where the boundaries were.

“There’s some great locations here… I mean, obviously, right? Hollywood started here for _reasons_ , and it wasn’t just the good weather. We could find somewhere cool and let it inspire us.”

Colin didn’t reply right away, and Eoin just shifted into a more comfortable position on the sofa and let the silence grow. Eventually Colin said, “Is this going to be… what my nephew would call a ‘kissing film’…?”

Eoin snorted in amusement. “Only if we feel so inspired.”

“Uh huh,” Colin said sceptically. “And what will happen to it once it’s done?”

“Anything from delete it, to keep it to ourselves, to release it on Vimeo.” Eoin nudged him. “I’m just thinking of using my phone’s camera, and editing it on my laptop. Nothing serious enough for a film festival! But it might look good on our CVs, and it keeps your hand in, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Colin nodded. “Someone once said that storytelling as a skill is like using a muscle. It helps to exercise it regularly.”

“Exactly! So… what d’you think?”

“I think… give me some ideas, and I’ll consider it.”

“Meanwhile…” Eoin was grinning at him, obviously pleased, “kissin’ is also a skill, you know…”

“And fuckin’,” Colin agreed. 

“We should practice while we can. Wouldn’t want to get rusty!”

Colin put aside the book, and said in his broadest brogue, “Then have at it, my man!”

♦

The world turned on its axis, normal one day, strange the next, and then _everything_ changed. Borders were closing; travel was restricted or cancelled. Colin spent a morning on Eoin’s landline phone, trying to get a flight home to Ireland, but it seemed next to impossible – so he put his name on a waitlist, and ended the call. He spun around on the chair to face Eoin, who was sitting on the edge of the sofa, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. 

“No luck, then?” Eoin asked in pensive tones. 

Colin had his arms crossed, trying to hold in the tension. Nothing felt certain anymore, and surely it was everyone’s first instinct to be at home with family at such a time. “No luck. They’re saying maybe, in a few weeks – but who knows what things will be like by then, eh?” Colin sighed. “You’re OK staying here?”

“Yeah,” Eoin answered with a nod. “Not that I wouldn’t mind being in Dublin with Mum, but this feels like home to me now.” After a moment’s thought he added, “Mum’s probably glad enough not to be stuck in quarantine with me 24/7, for all that.”

Colin managed a flattened kind of smile. “I’ve got family in Boston, if I could get there – and it would feel like I’m sort of halfway home, but… Well, I’m sure they’d take me in, but I’d be imposing. It’s not like they don’t have a full house already.”

Eoin shrugged easily, but he kept his gaze averted when he asked, “Wanna be my quarantine buddy, then?” 

“Dunno…” 

“We’ll move you out of that hotel – there’s no point paying for it if you don’t have to, and God only knows how long this will last. And we can clear up the spare room – it’s not huge, but you’ll have your own space when you need it.” After a moment, Eoin looked at him directly and added, “You’d be welcome, no question about it.”

Colin was tempted, that was for sure. They were watching each other, though still a little warily, as if trying to take each other’s measure. “Dunno,” Colin said again. “Won’t we drive each other mad?” 

Eoin shrugged carelessly. “It’ll either make or break us.” 

Colin gulped down a breath. Trust Eoin to plunge right to the core of it. “As a couple, you mean?” 

“Aye.” 

Another breath dragged in as his heart pounded. But he felt happy, Colin belatedly realised, or as happy as he could be with the world around them so strange. He felt excited about the possibilities of himself and Eoin, rather than anxious. Sure, it could all go wrong, but… 

Colin watched this amazing, creative, easy-going, gloriously contrary man for a long moment, and then finally murmured, “Hope it’ll be the making of us, then.” 

“Aye,” said Eoin – and then his hands reached towards Colin, and Colin was tumbling down into his arms, and they stretched out together there on the sofa, bodies pressing and limbs twining, and their mouths eagerly engaging once more in their neverending kiss.

♦


End file.
